The entrance to the zone was broken.
Not cracked, not breached broken, like something had tried to erase it from reality and failed halfway through.
It shimmered like heat haze over glass, hovering just above the ground. Fragments of buildings flickered in and out of view. Streetlights pulsed like heartbeat monitors. A child's tricycle looped the same two seconds of movement ,rolling, tipping, vanishing, restarting.
> System Notice:
Caution: Fractured Zone – Entry Will Affect Temporal Stability
Mental anchors required for traversal.
Aya read the warning aloud, voice steady. "This is it."
Niko stood just behind her. "He's in there."
Kael cracked his knuckles. "Then what are we waiting for?"
Silas was silent.
---
They stepped through together.
The transition wasn't like crossing a threshold it was like being peeled.
Light bled sideways. The air folded inward. Sounds stretched like elastic.
Then: Stillness.
The team stood in the middle of a warped landscape. A city but not quite. Buildings towered with impossible angles. Half of them hung sideways, like dreams slipping out of alignment. The sky pulsed a low grey-blue, and the horizon curved downward.
Time was wrong here.
Aya placed a hand on a wall it shimmered with pieces of her past. A flower she'd once grown. Her mother's scarf. Gone when she blinked.
"Memories," Rowan said. "It's responding to us."
"No," Niko whispered. "To him."
---
They moved forward slowly.
The ground rippled beneath them sometimes wood, sometimes concrete, sometimes… grass from a backyard that didn't exist.
Then, a shift.
The world recoiled.
Suddenly, they were separated.
---
Aya's Fragment
The air was warm. Sunlight slanted through stained-glass panels above her. The scent of soil and lavender filled her nose.
Aya stood in a greenhouse.
Her greenhouse.
Her old one. From the city. Before the collapse.
She turned slowly, disoriented. The table was still there, neatly arranged with terracotta pots. A pair of scissors sat exactly where she'd left them. The drip-line systems she'd designed herself hissed softly in the background.
It was wrong.
Too right.
Too perfect.
Then she heard a familiar voice.
> "Aya. You made it back."
She turned and her breath caught in her throat.
Her brother.
Alive. Smiling. Dressed in the same hoodie he'd worn the day he left to look for medicine and never came back.
He walked toward her like it had only been days.
> "Everything's okay now," he said. "You don't have to fight anymore."
Her chest ached.
She wanted to believe it.
Wanted to run into his arms.
But something was off.
The sunlight through the stained glass didn't warm her skin. The lavender smelled like old memories flat, like dried petals. And when he smiled again, there was no crinkle at the corner of his eyes.
He opened his arms.
> "Stay."
Aya took a step forward.
Then froze.
Something brushed her hand.
A vine.
Not from the greenhouse.
One of hers from the present.
Alive. Real.
And wrapped around her wrist like a reminder.
She clenched her fist.
"No," she whispered. "You're not him."
The figure glitched.
His voice distorted.
The glass above cracked.
Aya screamed and the illusion shattered into green dust.
---
Rowan's Fragment
Bookshelves surrounded him.
Rowan blinked, spinning slowly in place.
He was in a library. Endless. Circular. Lit by a golden dome of light. Each wall was stacked with books, maps, scrolls some written in his own careful handwriting.
He stepped forward, brushing a finger along the spine of a journal. It vibrated slightly at his touch.
He opened it.
Inside: calculations. Glitch formulae. Memory decay curves.
All of it… his.
Except… not.
A figure stood at the far table. No three of them. Versions of himself.
One hunched over a scroll, muttering. Another laughed, surrounded by ruined paper. The third was bleeding ink pouring from his eyes like tears.
The laughing one looked up.
> "You're the only one who trusted people."
Rowan stiffened.
> "That's what broke you. Letting them in."
The one crying stood. He clutched a torn page in shaking hands.
> "You stopped seeing patterns. Started seeing faces."
Rowan stepped back, breath caught in his throat.
The shelves warped. The room pulsed. The books began bleeding ink.
"You're not me," he whispered.
Then he saw it.
A single loose scrap stuck between the pages of a fallen journal.
It read:
> "You're more than patterns. You're proof. — J."
Jaden's handwriting.
Rowan clutched the note like a prayer.
The ink-versions of himself screamed and burst into ash.
---
Kael's Fragment
The world was grey.
Cold.
A ruined campfire crackled beside him, barely alive.
Kael sat alone.
Not hurt. Not panicked. Just… empty.
He looked around. No voices. No teammates. Just old gear, scavenged packs, and silence.
He stood. Walked. Called their names.
No answer.
He circled ruins. Passed old signs. Revisited hollow buildings.
Still silence.
The fire had gone out.
For a second just a second he felt it in his bones:
They left you.
Then footsteps.
Behind him.
Kael whirled, fists raised.
Jaden stood there singed hoodie, lopsided smile, carrying a dented thermos.
> "Worst rescue ever, huh?"
Kael blinked.
Jaden didn't vanish.
Didn't glitch.
He stepped forward and offered the thermos.
Kael's throat tightened.
"You always show up late," he whispered.
Jaden grinned. "Well, you're hard to find when you're sulking."
Kael laughed.
Really laughed.
The world around him burst into color.
---
Niko's Fragment
Wind whispered through tall grass.
Niko stood in a field of blank gravestones.
She didn't recognize any of them.
No names. No markings.
Just presence.
Each one hummed with something quiet and sorrowful emotion long buried but not gone.
Whiskers trotted ahead, flickering like a dream.
She followed.
One grave pulsed brighter than the rest.
It had her name on it.
But no date.
Only a word.
> "Listened."
She knelt beside it.
Not to mourn. Not to cry.
But to understand.
In this place of forgotten things, she had not been forgotten.
Because Jaden remembered her.
Believed her.
Listened to her.
She stood, brushing off her knees.
The gravestones melted into wildflowers.
---
Silas's Fragment
Light.
Clean. Blinding. Holy.
He stood before the Gates of Heaven pristine and eternal.
A voice called from behind the gold arch.
> "Return, Silas. You've wandered long enough."
He was bathed in celestial warmth.
The old part of him the obedient part ached to step forward.
To be weightless again.
To forget.
Then he looked down.
Burned into the stone:
A handprint.
Small. Human.
His hand trembled as he pressed his palm to it.
Jaden's memory flickered behind his eyes.
And the voice in his head said:
> "You chose me."
Silas smiled.
And walked away.
---
The world reset around them.
The group stood together again breathing hard, blinking like they'd just come out of drowning.
They said nothing.
They didn't need to.
The zone ahead pulsed with deeper color.
Rowan was first to speak.
"Ready?"
Silas's wings unfurled.
"No more echoes."
Niko pointed into the distance. "He's close. I feel him."
---
End of Chapter 18
Author's notes:
Nighttt nighttt